Sunday Times North editor and wife released
The couple had been arrested by detectives investigating the leaking of transcripts of telephone conversations between British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s chief of staff and Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness.
The transcripts were contained in a new updated biography of the Sinn Féin chief negotiator co-written by the couple.
A PSNI spokeswoman confirmed the pair were released in the early hours of yesterday morning. A former Special Branch officer arrested on Wednesday remains in custody.
The three arrests followed publication in The Times of the transcripts used in the biography, entitled Martin McGuinness, From Guns to Government.
The transcripts detailed conversations between Mr McGuinness and Tony Blair’s chief of staff Jonathan Powell as well as with former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam.
At the time, Mr McGuinness was education minister in the now suspended power-sharing Stormont Executive and Ms Mowlam was fighting to hold on to her job in advance of a meeting with Mr Blair in August 1999.
Sinn Féin, which has protested to Downing Street, has accused MI5 of bugging the telephone conversations and compiling the transcripts featuring Mr McGuinness who has admitted once being the IRA’s number two in Derry.
